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Eight unmissable events in Germany in January 2023

Think the month after Christmas is all doom and gloom? Think again. These eight events happening in Germany this January are bound to banish the winter blues.

Published: 30 December 2022 17:22 CET
Updated: 7 January 2023 09:19 CET
Balloons over Tegernsee
Balloons fly over the Tegernsee Valley at the Montgolfiade Balloon Festival. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/Tegernseer Tal Tourismus GmbH | Stefan Schiefer

It’s cold, it’s wet and the joy of Christmas is behind us, so it be can tempting to stay home and hibernate in January. But before you draw the curtains and wrap yourself up in a big blanket, check out a few of these events happening around Germany this January.

Who knows? They may even tempt you out of the house…

January 1st – 15th: Christmas Gardens 

If you’re not quite ready for Christmas to be over, why not gather family and friends and head to one of the magical Christmas Gardens around the country? From Berlin to Stuttgart and Dresden to Cologne, parks and botanical garden across the country are lit up with dazzling lights and imaginative installations.

To get the best experience, head there after dark and enjoy a hot chocolate or cup of Glühwein as you soak up the sights of the winter wonderland. You can find details of all the Christmas Gardens around the country and how to buy tickets here. 

Christmas Garden in Baden-Württemberg.

A fox made out of lights at a Christmas Garden in Baden-Württemberg. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Felix Kästle

January 5th – 21st: Tanztage 2023, Berlin

This cult festival of contemporary dance is returning to Berlin for the 32nd time, showcasing the best up and coming talent on the dance scene. This year, the performances will explore our sensory overwhelm in the modern world and consider how we can adapt to the rhythm of today’s high-speed, social media-driven reality.

Each of the ten performances will be accompanied by seminars or workshops that will build on the themes explored in the work. Visit the Tanztage website for more information and to book tickets.

January 6th: Epiphany 

After the 12 days of Christmas comes the feast of Epiphany or Dreikönigsfest – the Festival of the Three Kings. On this date, three lucky German states – Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, and Saxony-Anhalt – also have a bank holiday. 

If you’re in a Catholic state, you may see ‘Star Singers’ go door to door collecting money for charity, and traditionally the Chancellor also gets a visit from these tuneful youngsters, who are usually dressed up as the three kings. 

Even if you’re not in one of the regions where you get to put your feet up on the 6th, there are often plenty of evening concerts happening on this date, so keep an eye out for something in your area. 

READ ALSO: Three Kings’ Day: What you should know about Germany’s public holiday in three states

January 16th – February 1st: Pop Freaks Festival, Stuttgart 

After a two-year Covid hiatus, Pop Freaks festival is returning to the Merlin cultural centre in Stuttgart for six days of groundbreaking music from the German-speaking world. More than just a pop event, Pop Freaks Festival showcases bands and artists from across the spectrum of genres, with a mixture of music-industry veterans and up-and-coming acts. This year, the line-up includes Kratzen, Tristan Brusch and Wildes, among others. You can find more details and a full line-up here. 

READ ALSO: Five ways to make the most of Germany this winter

January 20th – 23rd: Nachtiville Festival, Wangels, Schleswig-Holstein

If you’ve been missing summer beach parties this winter, make sure you head to Nachtiville, an electronic music festival held on Weissenhäuser Strand on the Baltic coast. As you might imagine, shivering on a beach all night wouldn’t be too fun in January, so you’ll be relieved to know the festival is primarily indoors.

This year around 4,000 electronic music fans are expected to turn up, and Ben UFO, DJ Stingray, und Helena Hauff are confirmed in the line-up. 

Weißenhäuser Strand Germany

Weißenhäuer Strand, where Nachtiville Festival is held. Photo: picture alliance / dpa | Christian Charisius

January 23rd – 29th: Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis, Saarbrücken

Berlinale may not be on until February, but film buffs can still get their fix at the Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis (MOP) in Saarbrücken. Over six days, a total of 127 films will be presented in 225 screenings in the seven festival cinemas in Saarbrücken and other parts of Saarland. Of these, more than 50 will be competing for top prizes in the categories of feature film, documentary, medium-length film, and short film.

You can find more information on the festival and the competitors for this year here on the MOP website. 

READ ALSO: Surviving winter: 8 tips for enjoying the cold like a true German

January 27th – February 5th:  CTM Festival, Berlin

If you’re itching to go to a January event that couldn’t be more Berlin if it tried, the CTM Festival could be exactly what you’re looking for. This contemporary art and music festival is focusing on the theme of “Portals” this year and will explore how music and sound can be a gateway to alternative realities. Organisers say there’ll be a strong focus on South Asian electronic music this year, as well as collaborations between African and German artists via the Afropollination project. The festival is also teaming up with KW Institute of Contemporary Art on a multimedia performance that will bridge the worlds of music and visual art. 

For more information and to book tickets, visit the CMT Festival website.

January 29th – February 5th:  Montgolfiade Hot-Air Balloon Festival, Tegernsee, Bavaria

It’s hard to imagine a more picturesque setting for a balloon festival than Tegernsee, a sprawling lake in Bavaria surrounded by Alpine views. This year, visitors can once again pack a picnic hamper, wrap up warm, and admire an endless array of colourful balloons as they soar over Lake Tegernsee. And for those who prefer higher altitudes, 2023 marks the first year where people will be able to book balloon rides themselves and enjoy the view from above. 

Depending on the weather conditions, balloons will be taking off daily from 9am from various launch sites in the Tegernsee Valley. You can find more information and book your balloon ride here. 

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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